


Candy Cane Vodka

by Haze



Series: Resetverse [2]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alcohol-Related Bad Decisions, Christmas, Gen, M/M, No Festive Yard Decorations Were Harmed in the Writing of This One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haze/pseuds/Haze
Summary: "Yeah, Mikey, you accidentally made fucking peppermint Everclear. Congratulations and all, but Jesus Christ."Mikey gets an idea on the road after finding a bargain bin book on homemade infusions. Experimentation follows, and Yuletide chaos ensues.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way, Ray Toro/Mikey Way
Series: Resetverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583101
Comments: 5
Kudos: 80





	Candy Cane Vodka

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killingjarz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killingjarz/gifts).



> This started as a deleted scene in Crossed Out and then took on a life of its own. Super rough and unedited Christmas fun! No effect on the plot whatsoever! Inspired by true events, because my friends and I are stupid. I'm also gifting this one to Kady, who's great and whose blog is the reason I don't update nearly as much as I should. HIII KADY. GOD FORBID I FINISH ANYTHING ON SCHEDULE. Merry late Christmas y'all!

Mikey found the book two weeks before Christmas, in a pile of other weird culinary books at one of those tiny roadside stores that seem to sell one of every conceivable item in the universe. They’d stopped somewhere in east Jesus desert nowhere on their way to L.A., Brian swearing there was a hole in the gas tank because they _just_ filled up in Tucson, what the _fuck_ , even though they all knew by now the van got roughly one mile per gallon. Deserts were fucking weird. Mikey had sort of expected them to look like Tatooine, but he got spaghetti western instead. Every time he got out of the van he felt like they were about to be ambushed by masked strangers on horseback.

The front cover of the book was ripped and depicted what looked like the interior of Paul Bunyan's dream cabin if Paul Bunyan had been really into craft beer. _The Rustic Man's Guide to the Art of Homemade Spirits and Brews,_ it said in white disco bubble font along the top. According to the sticker slapped on the bottom right corner, it was ten cents. Mikey instantly picked it up.

"Dude, look at this," he said to Ray, who was poring over a rack of homemade candy nearby. Ray glanced over and snorted when Mikey held up the book.

"That's the most seventies thing I've seen since my parent's wedding pictures." He picked up a little bag of sugar-coated pink cubes and examined the label. Mikey, as usual, took advantage of the distraction to stare at him. Sometime between recording Bullets and the two tours they’d undertaken for it, Mikey had developed what he was certain was just a proximity-induced crush on Ray. It would never go anywhere, Mikey knew; he was pretty sure Ray was straight, first of all, and second, he doubted he’d be high on Ray’s hit list if he wasn’t. But indulging in the occasional ogle whenever he thought Ray wasn’t looking, Mikey figured, was harmless enough. (Especially when Gerard was all but undressing Frank with his eyes when he thought _Frank_ wasn’t looking, Jesus, did he not realize other people could still see him when he did that? It was mortifying, honestly.) Ray hadn’t shaved in a couple days and he looked better than any of the rest of them did with the resulting scruff. Mikey idly wondered how it would feel against his fingertips.

”Prickly pear cactus candy,” Ray was saying, and Mikey quickly looked back down at the book in case Ray happened to glance up again. “Do you think these have drugs in them?"

"Hope so. Get 'em and we'll find out." Mikey opened the cover. It was all about how to make your own various alcohols, and was apparently dependent on your also living in an ice shanty year-round if the pictures were anything to go by. One section in the table of contents caught his eye - _INVIGORATING HOLIDAY INFUSIONS_ \- and he flipped to the appropriate page. There were four recipes on one side, and the opposite page showed a tableau of tacky alpine Christmas featuring four mason jars festooned in plaid and greenery. Mikey widened his eyes at it - there were antlers as decoration, holy shit - before turning his attention to the recipes. One in particular seemed promising: candy cane vodka. All you needed was a mason jar, a bunch of candy canes, and vanilla flavored vodka. That sounded pretty sweet, actually, and reading over the instructions, it sounded totally feasible. Crush up candy canes, dump into jar, fill jar with vodka, let sit for a couple days in the dark and shake the jar every now and then. Mikey could do that. He'd been meaning to get Christmas stuff for everyone, try and lighten up the shitty mood that was starting to overshadow this tour.

Worth a try. At the very least, they'd have vodka. Mikey took a second to memorize the instructions, and then set the book back into the pile and picked up a couple red and green striped candy canes from the same rack Ray'd found the cactus stuff. Ray gave him a funny look, but didn't comment; Mikey raised his eyebrows in return and wandered off in search of a mason jar and vodka. They didn't have vanilla, but Mikey figured regular would work fine. Vodka was vodka, right? He bought two jars to be safe, and took it all out to a rickety wooden picnic table outside to prep them. Frank was sitting on the tabletop with his feet on the bench, writing something in a journal with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He glanced up as Mikey sat down and laid out his materials.

"Dare I ask?" he said, taking his cigarette out to ash it.

"Experiment," Mikey replied. He set to work unwrapping the candy canes and snapping them into pieces to drop into the bottom of both jars. Frank didn’t say anything else, but he did watch for awhile in silence, taking an occasional drag. There was enough vodka to fill both jars and have a couple mouthfuls left over, which he and Frank split. Mikey was screwing the lids back on when Ray and Gerard finally walked out of the store, Ray with a paper bag, Gerard clutching a long rectangular box with an enormous grin on his face.

“It’s a ukulele,” he announced with glee, showing it off first to Mikey, and then to Frank. “Look, Frankie, a fuckin’ ukulele! It was only five bucks and it’s still got all the strings.”

Frank took the box from him while Mikey raised his eyebrows at Ray, who shrugged and dug outthe bag of dubiously-drugged cactus candy to share. “Who am I to deny a man his toy ukulele?” he deadpanned, and Gerard looked miffed.

“Who says it’s a toy?” he said, as Frank pulled the box open and grabbed out a bright blue ukulele covered with a cartoonish print of white tropical flowers and sea turtles. Frank gave it an experimental strum, and they all winced.

“How do you tune these fuckin’ things?” said Frank, flipping the box over to read the back. “I don’t even know what the strings are supposed to be.”

“Ghosts can’t eat asparagus,” Ray said around a mouthful of cactus candy, and everyone stared at him like he’d spouted off Greek until he supplemented, “That’s the mnemonic my brother taught me. He plays. G-C-E-A. But you’ll never get that thing in tune,” he added, when Frank started turning pegs, “because it’s a toy.”

Mikey tried one of the cactus cubes. It tasted sort of like a cross between a watermelon Starburst and Dubble Bubble and, to his disappointment, did not contain drugs. Gerard gave Ray a sour look and plopped down on the bench next to Mikey. “What are these?” he asked, reaching for one of the jars, and Mikey slapped his hand away.

“They’re for Christmas,” said Mikey. “Don’t touch them, they have to sit for a couple days.” The vodka was already starting to turn a sort of murky color from the candy canes. He gave both jars a little swirl. Frank, after much concentration and microscopic peg turning, managed to convince the ukulele into something pretty close to in tune, and handed it back to Gerard with a triumphant grin. 

“I could tune a fuckin’ rock if you put strings on it,” he bragged to Ray, who rolled his eyes and held out the candy bag. Meanwhile, Gerard beamed at Frank like he’d just handed him the moon instead of a novelty instrument, and hugged the ukulele to his chest.

Mikey nudged him and leaned in. “If the hearts in your eyes get any bigger, Frank’s definitely gonna see,” he whispered, and Gerard dug his elbow into Mikey’s ribcage with a terse raise of his eyebrows.

“Shut up,” he hissed back, and cast a nervous eye at Frank, but Frank was caught up in a passionate explanation to Ray of why gelatin wasn’t vegan and why it was fucked up that they put it in everything, seriously, did Skittles need to have gelatin in them at all? Anyway, he definitely wasn’t listening. Gerard glared at Mikey anyway, and kicked him squarely in the ankle before turning his attention to the ukulele to pluck out some hesitant chords.

Across the road, at the four-pump gas station, Brian honked the van horn at the four of them twice. Mikey grabbed the two jars and followed Ray back to the van, where he stashed the two jars in the bottom of his duffel bag, because the instructions had mentioned placing them somewhere dark while the candy canes blended with the vodka. He’d check on them when they got to L.A.

* * *

In short: he did not. As a matter of fact, he forgot about the jars entirely, until they got to Portland on Christmas Eve. He was dragging his bag out of the van in front of the hotel Brian got them because it was Christmas, and heard the sound of glass thunking against the pavement when it hit the ground.

“Oh, _fuck_.” He instantly dropped to a crouch to claw through all the dirty laundry he’d shoved in the bag, and to his relief, found both jars intact at the bottom. He pulled them out and set them on the van’s bumper while he repacked the bag.

“Is that the vodka you had in the desert?” said Frank, who was unloading his own stuff and had watched the entire mini-drama. Mikey nodded. “Has it just been sitting in your bag this whole time?”

“Yeah, I sort of forgot about it.” Mikey slung his bag over his shoulder and picked up one of the jars, holding it up to a streetlight in the hotel parking lot. The candy canes had dissolved entirely; all that was left was a cloudy, dingy brown liquid.

“Looks like pond water,” Frank remarked, and Mikey couldn’t help but agree with him, though he was disappointed. In the picture from the book, the vodka had been a pinkish red. 

“What looks like pond water?” Gerard emerged from the front passenger seat with his godforsaken ukulele in hand. They were all starting to get tired of the ukulele, even Frank, who had gamely undertaken the task of re-tuning the fucking thing every five minutes (toy ukuleles did not maintain their tunings very well, it turned out) to make Gerard happy. Mikey had been entertaining a fantasy of stealing it while Gerard slept and burying it in the snow. Gerard caught a glimpse of the vodka jar, and made a face at it. “Ew. What _is_ that?”

“Merry Christmas,” said Mikey, and thrust it out toward him with a smirk. Gerard recoiled like it might bite him.

“I mean, it’ll probably taste fine,” Frank offered, trying not to laugh, and picked up the other jar to twist the lid off. “Maybe a little like toothpasteoh my _God_ ,” he interrupted himself as he took a sniff, and gagged. “Oh, Mikey, dude, this smells like mentholated rubbing alcohol.”

Mikey unscrewed the lid off the jar he was holding, inhaled, and coughed when his nose instantly burned. Wow, Frank was not kidding. It was like minty hand sanitizer. Gerard leaned in to smell Frank’s, and his whole face twisted on itself. “What the hell did you put in here, Mikey, gasoline?” he said, peering down into it as though he could analyze it by staring at it hard enough.

“Vodka. Candy canes and vodka.” Mikey took a tentative sip from the jar and nearly spit it out onto the wet asphalt. He managed to swallow, and then replaced the lid with his eyes watering. Something must have gone wrong, somehow. It wasn’t bad, necessarily, but it was way stronger than vodka now. Did he misremember the instructions?

Frank also tried some, to the same end. “We’re drinking mouthwash. Or moonshine. Holy shit, how did you even manage this?”

“I don’t know! The instructions just said add candy canes to vodka and at the end you’d get candy cane flavored vodka. I did everything it said to. Fuck, man, I got a D plus in chemistry, I probably fucked up somewhere.” Gerard, of course, also made a grab for the vodka Frank was holding to down a mouthful. “We’re gonna need mixers. Like, a lot of them.”

Ray, Otter, and Brian returned from the hotel lobby then with key cards. Brian handed them out in pairs. “The rest of you four can figure out who’s crashing where, Otter and I will be going straight to fucking sleep,” he announced as he did. Frank looked down at the envelopes, squinted, and then looked at Brian with his eyes wide.

“Did you get us three rooms instead of two?” he gasped.

“Merry Christmas,” Brian replied, and slid past Mikey to grab his bag out of the back of the van. “What’s in the jars?”

“Candy cane vodka. But something weird happened to it while it was sitting in my bag,” said Mikey, and took a key card from Frank. He and Gerard compared theirs, Gerard sneaking a look at Frank’s; he glanced back at Mikey with a pleading look, and Mikey rolled his eyes and swapped them without comment. It meant that Mikey would be sharing with Ray, which was no big loss. Gerard beamed and bumped him with his hip before shouldering his backpack.

“Candy cane vodka should not be that color,” said Ray, eyeing Frank’s jar in disgust, and Frank held it out to him.

“Dude, try it. Mikey made, like, Christmas jungle juice, it’s great.”

“Did you put real candy canes in it?” Brian asked, shaking his head when Mikey offered him his jar. “Like, with cane sugar and not corn syrup?”

“Uh.” Mikey thought back to the roadside shop. He didn’t remember seeing an ingredients list on the candy cane wrappers. “Maybe?”

“And how long’s it been since you made them?”

“Whenever we stopped in the desert after Tucson.”

Brian got a Look on his face then, the kind reserved for when one of them was being especially stupid, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mikey. Dude. Sugar _ferments._ You let sugar ferment in vodka for two weeks.”

Mikey glanced down at his jar. “And that’s…bad?” he guessed, and Brian heaved a sigh, and took the jar from him at last to give it an experimental sniff. He barely reacted, just rolled his eyes and screwed the lid back on.

“Yeah, Mikey, you accidentally made fucking peppermint Everclear. Congratulations and all, but Jesus Christ.”

Frank gave a high-pitched giggle then, and held the jar aloft. “Jesus Christ indeed. Happy birthday, Jesus. It’s only appropriate we get fucked up in His honor.”

* * *

Between the elevators, there was one of those giant brochure caddies for all the local attractions, along with a community board advertising seasonal stuff. In the middle of this was a poster for something called Peacock Lane, something which did not interest Mikey in the slightest but caught Gerard’s attention immediately. He read over the whole description, and then turned to the rest of them with a familiar fervent gleam in his eye.

“Guys, we have to do this.”

“No,” Otter said almost instantly, staring at the elevator doors like that would make them open faster. “I’m going to bed.”

“But it’s Christmas Eve! We can’t just do _nothing_ , come on.” Gerard looked around at the rest of them with his lower lip stuck out in an exaggerated pout. Brian shook his head, muttering something about calling his girlfriend; Frank stepped in and took a closer look at the board.

“What is it?” Ray asked, stifling a yawn.

“Neighborhood display,” Frank read off the poster, and nodded. “I’ve heard about these things. People go apeshit decorating their houses and you can walk around and look at them. It’s free,” he added, and shrugged. “I mean, it probably beats just sitting around a hotel room all night, yeah? And we’ve got Doc Mikey’s experiment in ethanol poisoning to keep it interesting.”

Ray glanced at Mikey, and smiled. “What the hell. It’s Christmas.”

Which was how the four of them ended up wandering down the streets of Portland that night, nipping out of the jars every now and again even though it really was just like drinking mouthwash. Gerard got directions from the nice older lady at the front desk; she even drew them a map on a piece of copy paper. She’d assured them it was only twenty minute’s walk and mostly a straight shot, but they’d left at eight and they were still looking for the place at eight forty-five. Frank had the idea when they passed an open coffee shop to buy hot chocolate to mix with the vodka - “not that this isn’t fun and all, shooting Everclear with you guys, but I feel like a lush” - and that made both the endless walking and the vodka much more tolerable. By the time they found Peacock Lane, it was nine o’clock, and Mikey was wasted. They all were. Each jar was a little more than half empty, which meant they’d drunk _way_ more of it than they should have, something which became more obvious when Frank tried to combine both jars into one and ended up dropping them both on the sidewalk, where they smashed. Candy cane vodka and broken glass sprayed over Ray and Mikey’s shoes.

“Aw, fuck!” Frank complained, and knelt to start picking it up, or tried; he tilted off-balance and fell into the patchy wet snow piled up in the grass next to the sidewalk. Gerard, having whirled around from his de facto line leader position to see what happened, gasped and tottered over to help him up again.

“Frank, dude, just leave 'em, you're gonna cut yourself,” said Ray, and Mikey was surprised to hear the words slur a little coming out of his mouth. He glanced over at him - maybe Ray _was_ swaying a little in place, or maybe that was Mikey. Ray caught his eye, and they smiled at each other, and Mikey looked away first, his breath catching in his throat for some reason. Ray did look pretty under the streetlight.

“Frankie, come on, we gotta see the Christmas lights,” Gerard urged, and with some effort on both their parts Frank staggered upright again, hooking his chin over Gerard’s shoulder when he was on his feet again.

“Christmas lights,” Frank agreed, and grinned. "Anything for you, Gee."

There were a lot of other people wandering around who had the same idea they did, mostly families, walking together in groups and pushing strollers. A few carolers stood on one corner, a barbershop quartet that Gerard was fascinated by and watched with a moonstruck look on his face until Frank tugged him away. Mikey had never seen so many Christmas displays on one street before. Every house had a different theme, from Nightmare Before Christmas to Star Wars, the latter of which was the obvious winner, at least in Mikey’s opinion. And Gerard's, judging by his excited shriek and the way he dragged Frank bodily across the street to see it up close. They had fucking inflatable AT-ATs on their lawn, how cool was that? Mikey pointed them out to Ray, because hello, inflatable Christmas AT-ATs, he didn’t even know they made those, and Ray laughed at him, but that was fine, because Ray had a nice laugh.

And then Ray grabbed his hand.

At first Mikey assumed it was because he was drunk and needed something to balance, but when Mikey looked at him Ray grinned, and Mikey must have looked every inch of the incredulity he felt because the grin faltered and Ray whispered to him, “Is this okay?” And Mikey couldn’t do much more than nod and squeeze Ray’s hand. Wow, holy shit, maybe Ray wasn’t as straight as he’d thought. His hand was warm.

“Oh, fuck, these are candy cane lightsabers, Gee, look!” Mikey heard Frank say, and then Frank was ripping out one of the candy canes decorating the path up to the front door, and brandishing it at Gerard like an actual lightsaber. “Master Kenobi, you disappoint me,” he wheezed, and then burst out giggling, “Oh God, has that one even happened yet? Sorry, I’m - “

Gerard grabbed out a candy cane from the other side of the path, and Mikey and Ray both slapped a hand to their foreheads in unison. “Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper?” he shouted at Frank, grinning, and took a swipe at him. They duked it out, chasing each other with their giant no-longer-lit candy canes, yelling random Star Wars quotes at each other and breaking down laughing more often than actually fighting. Mikey and Ray watched from the street, shouting occasional encouragement, until the front door opened and a man in Christmas pajamas came out to yell at them and threaten to call the police. They all took off running after that, and Ray kept holding Mikey's hand, and they ended up in someone else's yard down the road (way less cool, due to a lack of AT-ATs, as Mikey told Ray) where there was a high, lit-up brick archway that Gerard and Frank collapsed against to catch their breath. More candy canes were stuck along the edge of the lawn, and Mikey started to grab for one until Ray saw what he was doing and pulled him away.

"Please no, we're all gonna get arrested," he giggled, looking down the street the way they'd come in case anyone had followed them. When he turned back, his attention caught on something in the top of the archway. "Oh no."

"What?" Mikey followed his gaze to a bundle of mistletoe hung from the bricks, obviously a romantic photo-op gesture from the homeowners. Which, of course, Frank and Gerard were standing under, oblivious, laughing at something Gerard had said. Mikey clutched at Ray with both hands. "Don't tell them," he begged, sotto voce. "Please don't tell them, I'll never get the image out of my head, please - "

So naturally, Ray turned back to the other two with a huge evil grin on his face and announced in a sing-song, "Guuuys, you should look up," and Mikey buried his face in his hand with a resigned groan. Frank was the first one to see it - he sort of froze for a second, blinking up at it with his mouth open, and then he cut a nervous glance at Gerard, who was giving him a shy smile and the most ridiculous heart eyes Mikey had ever seen, Jesus.

“Um,” said Frank. “We don’t - I mean, just ‘cause it’s there, doesn’t mean, you know.”

Gerard’s smile vanished, and he stared at Frank like he’d personally set Gerard’s collectible trades on fire in front of him. “You don’t want to kiss me?” he asked, sounding crushed. Frank stopped short and gave Gerard an incredulous look in return.

“When did I ever fucking say that, you stupid asshole?” he demanded, and ripped his hands out of his jacket pockets to grab Gerard by the lapels and yank him forward. And then they were kissing, Gerard sliding his fingers into Frank’s hair and Frank pressing Gerard back against the brick, and Mikey spun around in place to look at the house across the street instead (which was National Lampoon-themed) because _hello_ , that was his _brother_ , what the fuck, Ray clearly wanted to give Mikey psychological trauma for Christmas and that made him a _dick._ The problem was, Mikey was having trouble standing up straight without the spinning around, and he found himself heading for a face plant directly onto the asphalt until Ray threw both arms around him to catch him.

“Why,” he complained, as Ray set him upright again (laughing uproariously at him the whole time, because again, Ray was a _dick),_ “would you ruin my perfectly good Christmas like that, Raymond?”

“Aww, come on, it’s cute!” Ray protested, grinning. “Who doesn’t love a good Christmas romance?” Mikey shoved at him in disgust.

“Maybe,” Gerard began airily, and Mikey hadn’t realized he and Frank had detached long enough to breathe, let alone speak. He looked over at where Gerard stood with one arm wrapped around Frank’s waist and the other cocked against his hip in bitchy-Gerard fashion. Gerard raised his eyebrows at him in a way that reminded Mikey way too much of their mom. “Maybe he’d be less cranky about it if he got to participate,” he finished, with a pointed look at Ray.

“Thanks for sharing and all, but I don’t actually want Frank’s tongue down my throat,” Mikey shot back, as he felt a deep flush ignite across his cheeks as red as the stupid candy canes in the planter. _Shut up shut up shut up,_ he broadcasted at Gerard as hard as he could.

Frank snorted. “Oh, I’m not offering, as desperate as I am to check the ‘both Ways’ box on my dance card.” Gerard elbowed him in the ribs, and Frank winced, but giggled. “We’ll trade you spots, though.”

“What?” said Ray, but by then Frank and Gerard were moving, and clearly they had _planned_ something in the five seconds they hadn’t spent sucking face because before Mikey could even try to run away, they’d grabbed hold of both him and Ray and shoved them into the archway in their place. Okay, so everyone in this band was an _asshole_ , wow, his own fucking brother was apparently just waiting for an opportunity to betray him, Mikey would fucking remember this later. He glared at Gerard with the subtext of _et tu Brute_ glowering behind it as much as he could muster, but because Gerard was clearly evil now he just grinned back at him and skipped off with Frank in tow to look at the Griswold house up close.

Great. Awesome. Everyone fucking _sucked._

“Mikey,” said Ray, quietly, and Mikey turned to glare at him, too, but it faded as soon as he saw the fraught expression on Ray’s face. “This is…probably a bad time. All Christmassy serendipity aside,” and he gestured up at the wretched mistletoe, avoiding Mikey’s eye. Mikey just stared at him. “I don’t really want to - just because we’re - oh, Christ, forget it, let’s just go look at lights.”

Mikey’s hand shot out to grab hold of Ray’s elbow before he could bail out of the archway. “Tell me,” he said, and okay, apparently peppermint Everclear brought out a whole new Mikey who demanded things from people, that was strange. Ray looked just as taken aback by it as Mikey felt. But Mikey was too drunk to be embarrassed. So he leaned into it, and raised his eyebrows expectantly. Ray started to stammer out something like an excuse - Mikey, impatient, pressed his hand over Ray’s mouth. “Too late to back out. Tell me.”

Ray took a sharp breath in when Mikey dropped his hand. “You don’t - do you not already know? I mean, Gerard figured it out months ago.”

Oh, Mikey was going to _fucking kill him._

“And you notice everything, so I just figured you were being, like, professional and ignoring it because - you’re mad,” Ray stopped, looking crestfallen. “I knew this was a bad idea, I’m sorry…” He trailed off when Mikey held up a hand.

“Yeah, I’m mad,” Mikey said evenly. “But not at you. I _am_ gonna push Gerard into traffic after this, though.”

“…Why?” said Ray, concerned, but not for long, because then Mikey threw his arms around Ray’s neck and kissed him like his life depended on it. Ray seemed too shocked to respond much, but he did put his hands on Mikey’s hips, and kept them there when Mikey pulled back to gasp for air. “Oh,” Ray mumbled against his mouth, dazed. “But - you didn’t say anything!”

“I thought you were _straight,_ ” Mikey all but shouted at him. “And Gerard didn’t tell me anything even though he _knew_ I liked you and I am going to _kill him,”_ but he was temporarily distracted by Ray kissing him, which was fine, better than fine, Ray could distract him anytime. Mikey placed his hands on either side of Ray's face and was pleased to discover that his scruff felt perfect under Mikey's fingertips. Ray still tasted just a little bit like peppermint.

Best failed experiment _ever._

It was all perfect and lovely right up until Mikey heard Gerard and Frank snickering across the street, and then he remembered to be pissed off again. He pulled away from Ray at last, and then seized one of the decorative candy canes before Ray could stop him, and he ran (stumbled) across the street to whack Gerard on the shoulder with it because what the _fuck_ , did Gerard want Mikey to suffer or something, after all of Gerard's endless crying-heart-out-over-Frank moments Mikey had endured in the last year, this was the thanks Mikey got? Somewhere in the midst of the onslaught, Frank got ahold of another candy cane to try and defend Gerard, and then they all had candy canes and they were having a Christmas-themed battle royale in the middle of an adorable neighborhood in Portland. By the time the two cops showed up to escort them out, Mikey's stomach hurt from laughing.

Brian did not find it nearly as amusing, when he arrived in the van to collect them from the police. He was still in his pajamas, and his hair was sticking up, and he yelled at them the entire drive back to the hotel about how stupid they all were. But that wasn't anything new, and they all knew he'd be fine again in the morning. Gerard passed out with his head in Frank's lap in the backseat; Mikey caught Frank watching Gerard sleep with a soft, fond smile on his face and his fingers petting through Gerard's hair. Which was, okay, pretty fucking cute, even if it was his _brother_ , Christ. Ray watched Mikey try not to react to what was happening for a little while before he rolled his eyes and pulled Mikey toward him, wrapping his arm around Mikey's shoulders, and Mikey was more than happy to tip his head against Ray's collarbone and close his eyes with a little sigh.

"M' gonna need your distractions for probably awhile," he murmured against Ray's neck, and Ray snorted.

"Merry Christmas, Mikey Way," was all he said.


End file.
